Organization

Its open source nature has made possible a big deal of changes and adaptation which would have been impossible or very costly with a commercial product.

EducaMadrid

Details

IndustryEducation, Not For Profit/NGO

SolutionStudent Portals, Intranets

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EducaMadrid represents the Madrid school system in Spain, which accounts for over 500,000 students across 1,600 schools.

EducaMadrid is sponsored by the Consejería de Educación de la Comunidad Autonoma de Madrid, an organization of the Spanish public administration.

Challenge

The Madrid school system wanted to encourage communication and foster relationships between different schools, grades, and classrooms. With 500,000 potential users to account for, the non-profit organization knew that it needed a solution that could effectively serve and manage its user base without the high price tag and per-user costs typical of most commercial applications. Taking these needs into account, a list of criteria was created with key points including:

ability to scale to the total number of users and students

flexible and customizable layouts dependent on the user

community resources accessible to everyone

Resolution

Germinus, a Liferay partner in Spain, selected Liferay Portal for its flexibility and open standards. It also leveraged Liferay's hierarchical system of communities to create both an extranet and an intranet for the Madrid school system.

The extranet was comprised of a set of websites, containing educational news and content. The intranet websites that were personalizeable based on the role of the registered user.

With Liferay's robust UI, Germinus was able to customize the look and feel of the portal according to each user's hierarchal role and/or grade. For example, logged-in teachers access a "desktop" displaying classroom materials. Students, on the other hand, access a different UI that catered to their age and grade-specific learning needs. As the students progressed to higher grades, their user interface becomes increasingly more complex.

Germinus also implemented a web builder that allowed for the easy creation of websites using various portlets within Liferay Portal and established virtual communities with group chat, classroom email, and other collaborative features.